Tibetan Video Archive Project:
Now a program of the Global Diversity Film Project
Documenting a culture on the cusp of change, TVAP creates original documentaries as well as providing archival video of Tibetan subjects throughout the world.
The Tibetan Video Archive Project (TVAP) provides professional-quality footage on Tibetan subjects to a variety of non-profit organizations for purposes of cross-cultural education. Both archival footage and finished documentaries are available, covering Tibetans in Asia and North America. Project director Debra Denker---videographer, social documentarian, and writer---has shot extensive footage on Buddhist and Bon subjects in India and Nepal in early 2004, Eastern Tibet in May-June, 2005, and central Tibet in August, 2006.
CURRENT PROJECTS
Amnye Machen (work in progress)
A pilgrimage circumambulating a sacred mountain in the Amdo region of Eastern Tibet.
Light on the Roof of the World (work in progress)
In August, 2006, Perception International teamed with Unknown Sages, a Canadian organization that facilitates Healing Touch volunteer service travel to South and Himalayan Asia, to co-sponsor a holistic health team’s journey to central Tibet to teach Healing Touch and offer treatments to those in need. TVAP project director Debra Denker, a Certified Healing Touch Practitioner and Instructor, traveled with three Healing Touch students to Lhasa, Tibet’s capital.
There the team presented Healing Touch to the directors of the Mentsikhang---the Hospital of Traditional Tibetan Medicine---and the Tibetan Medical College, where Tibetan doctors study this ancient system. If invited, the team hopes to return in future to teach at these institutions. Debra taught Healing Touch to Tibetan staff members of One H.E.A.R.T., a U.S.-based NGO that conducts outreach and training in safe birthing and maternal-child health care. She was assisted by Tekla Fulton, R.N., founder of Unknown Sages, and by Page Herring, a longtime midwife and fisherman from Alaska. Ugyen Tsewang, a Tibetan born in Sikkim who is studying Healing Touch, contributed his expertise as translator and facilitator. All the team members participated in photo and video documentation of the teaching as well as their travels throughout central Tibet, where they offered treatments to a variety of people ranging from Buddhist nuns to babies to men and women of all ages.
Follow these links to learn more about the project.
COMPLETED PROJECTS
We Are All Mothers (running time 23:36) Shown in 2007 Santa Fe Film Festival
According to Tibetan Buddhism, all sentient beings have been each other’s mothers at some time on the endless wheel of karma and reincarnation. Thus we must have compassion, and treat every single being as our own mother, and our own child.
Released in August, 2007, this is the story of an intrepid group of health care professionals, holistic healers, and Buddhist students who braved many obstacles to journey to a remote high-altitude area of Kham, in eastern Tibet. At the invitation of His Eminence Garchen Rinpoche, who was concerned about extremely high rates of maternal and infant mortality in his home village, Gargon, the team of nine American women ran a daily clinic, conducted midwifery training, and interviewed villagers about their concerns and hopes. The multi-talented team included nurses, midwife trainers, acupuncturists, holistic healers, and a medical anthropologist.
This visually rich film documents their work with reverence, affection, and humor. Watch Tibetan woman, some semi-nomadic yak-herders and others educated young schoolteachers, as they learn how to be skilled birth attendants in a region where, by cultural
tradition, women have given birth out on the grasslands, sometimes cutting the umbilical cord with a stone. See how an alternate future is being created as the women of Gargon become empowered through knowledge of safe birthing practices.
TVAP’s Project Director Debra Denker participated in the May, 2005 trip as both filmmaker and healer, and Perception International board member and medical anthropologist Tara Lumpkin, PhD, wrote a comprehensive needs assessment (see link below).
A co-production with Rainbow Lotus Productions.
Follow these links to watch the movie:
Follow these links for in-depth information relating to the project.
Loving Mother, Bon Children (running time 36:44)
This film interweaves the stories of producer/director Debra Denker, a longtime supporter of a Tibetan Bon-po orphanage in Dolanji, India, and Lama Tempa Duktee, a young monk who grew up there in the 80's. When Debra and Tempa meet in Santa Fe, they discover that Debra had taken photos of Tempa as a boy. These spark Tempa's reminisces, interwoven with Debra's return to Dolanji in 2004 against the golden warp of the all-pervasive presence of the Bon goddess Chamma, the Loving Mother. The film has been aired on Channel 10 in Anchorage, Alaska, and an excerpt was shown at the Taos Mountain Film Festival in September, 2005. (in association with Global Focus Films; available on DVD or VHS, by donation).
- download PDF Gargon Health Project REPORT
- download PDF Community-Based Ecotourism Kham Tibet REPORT
Offerings of Flowers (running time 3:00)
Offerings of Flowers is a short memento of the joyous throwing of myriads of marigolds in celebration of long life prayers for Kyabgon Chetsang Rinpoche, the lineage holder of the Drikung Kagyu school of Tibetan Buddhism. The ceremony took place during the Monkey Year Teachings in Lumbini, Nepal in March, 2004.
Watch the three minute video clip, below.
Funding is urgently needed to make completion of "Between Worlds" possible,
as well as completion and distribution of ongoing TVAP projects.
For more information:
Email: rainbowlotus1@mac.com
DEBRA DENKER, Project Director
PMB 514
551 W. Cordova Rd.
Santa Fe, NM 87505
Tel/Fax: 505.466.2989
To make a tax deductible donation:
Perception International with GDFP marked in the memo.